Catatonic Mafia Dreams

Not that he wants to be an assassin or even a low-class goon, but when Beamer Baclawski heard that Ginger Wakem’s book, Trust No One, Promise Nothing features the mafia, he couldn’t wait to get his paws on it and nose into it.

Call it mafia envy. Or attribute it to the mouser’s fascination with a murder mystery—make that multiple murderous mysteries. Or his interest in historical fiction. Or the southwest Florida setting. Or even the steamy romances.

No. The novel centers on the Catanetti Family. And every good feline respects and fears the Catanettis.

The story opens with Ray Lewis’s initiation into the Cosa Nostra in 1938 in South Florida. He’s an Italian kid with what the author calls, “a spotless reputation and balls of steel.” Beamer first coveted, then glommed onto that characterization. Ready for action, he arched his back and swelled his tail. Channeling his alter ego Rocky (named in honor of his brother) D’Felinni (what else would a mafia cat call himself, “D” for short), he fancied himself a gumshoe. Flicking his tongue over his foot pads, Rocky D attacked the story.

After Ray’s initiation, the plot lurches ahead 42 years to the death of his son. Ray’s alcohol-infused state of mourning is interrupted by his mafia boss, who has called with the assignment of a lifetime. It requires Ray’s immediate presence in Denver. That’s where Carmelita, his lover and mother of his dead son, lives.

Like any reader, Rocky D wondered what had happened in the intervening years, why Ray would need to go to Denver, and how the boy died. Ray’s wife Grace wonders the same.

Ah, the feline’s intuition kicked in. That’s the mystery! Well, one of them, anyway.

With little forethought, Ray ditches Grace for Carmelita. As he reflects on his life of following dangerous orders, the man with a spotless reputation and balls of steel heads to Denver with every intention of leaving the life of omerta and vengeance behind.

Realizing that her husband has deserted her and their twin daughters, Grace picks apart Ray’s life, beginning with the contents of an antique chest and closet in his locked bedroom: old newspaper articles about unsolved crimes; tattered and worn receipts; cashmere sweaters; blood-stained clothes; lacy lingerie; weapons; and cash—lots of cash. Horrified, she concludes that Ray has been living a dual life.

Grace then seeks the help of an attractive detective. Rocky D sniffed out a subplot between those two that mirrors the love affair between Ray and Carmelita. However, as a mafia cat, he was more interested in tracking the criminal storyline from Florida to Denver, to Mexico, and finally to West Virginia.

Hissing at villains with heavily oiled, slicked-back hair, and yowling at the imagined scent of decapitated bodies, Rocky D was as hyper-focused as if he were stalking a mouse.

But he lost the trail from time to time. That’s not hard to do with a story that spans a continent and nearly half a century. Undeterred, however, he chattered and chirped.

“I’m a cat.” Focusing on his keen senses and filing his claws on a nearby scratching post, he reasoned, “I hunt. Mice, bad guys, plot points. They’re all the same.”

That’s when he would double back and fixate on the timeline and clues. Amidst phone calls from the living, there are letters from the dead. Two boys are switched at birth, and two girls are adopted in clandestine circumstances. Genealogies overlap, cargo is hijacked, orders are whispered, and people are killed.

Pouncing like a panther on the twists and turns, Rocky D followed the disparate plot lines until they finally converge. Beginning with a pivotal event at the Cat House (the Catanetti’s saloon and house of ill repute), and climaxing with a shoot-out at the Catanetti safe house, Rocky D, like Ray Lewis and the other main characters, learned to trust no one, and promise nothing—in Wakem’s book, anyway.

Trust No One, Promise Nothing, Rocky D concluded, is a kibble trail of intrigue that leads to the bloody details of inter- and intra-family honors and horrors; hostilities and blind allegiances; and forbidden relationships with consiglieris, unwilling witnesses, and fatal mistakes.

But in real life, Rocky D is Beamer. He trusts everyone and promises nothing but kitty hugs. Yet in his alternative universe, he goes catatonic with dreams of a sequel to the Catanetti legend that every cool cat can sink his claws into.

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